Posted on 01/29/2007 4:10:13 PM PST by wagglebee
LONDON, January 29, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – British Catholics heard a flurry of naked anti-Catholic sentiments expressed last week by some government Members and Cabinet Ministers in the “row” over the government’s decision to force Churches to adopt children to homosexuals.
Anti-Catholic, anti-clerical and anti-papal slurs had been, until as recently as fifty years ago, standard fare in Britain’s political discourse where the established state Protestant religion is officially anti-Catholic, but most British people, both Catholics and Anglicans, were grateful to assign them to history’s waste bin.
“I’m not going to have some bloody reactionary German Pope dictate the law of our land,” said one minister quoted by Mary Ann Sieghart.
Sieghart writes in an Op-Ed in the Times, that another admitted, “only half-jokingly,” that his mother had always told him, “Never trust a Catholic.” A third asked, “Where’s all the child abuse and paedophilia? In the Catholic Church. They should get their own bloody house in order and sort out the way paedophilia lies hidden.”
The anti-Catholic sentiment of Labour’s hard-left elite, however, is not shared by everyone on the government side of the House. Of the 40 Catholic MP’s of Blair’s Labour party, a majority wanted the exemption.
The Telegraph quotes Peter Kilfoyle, MP for Liverpool Walton, a working class region, “This is just one more reason not to vote for us.” Kilfoyle’s seat is considered one of the Labour Party's safest since 1964, with Labour polling over 70% of the vote in every general election since 1992.
Kilfoyle said his constituents and many like-minded Britons would not take kindly at voting time to a Labour Party that appears to be bullying churches. Describing his constituents as “not the most enlightened people” Kilfoyle said, “They would be viewed by the London liberal tendency that is pushing this agenda as reactionary.”
“But they are decent people, with decent values, and they do not understand why the Government is doing this. They will react with disgust if any of the agencies do close. We will pay a heavy price and lose votes all over the country.”
Joe Benton, the MP for neighbouring Bootle, said, “I have strong reservations over this. Nothing has persuaded me that it is right. There should be an exemption for the Church. We are getting ourselves into a terrible mess.”
British public opinion is almost exactly divided, with polls showing 42 per cent favouring an exemption and 43 per cent against. The Guardian reports today that the most recent polls show public trust in the Labour government has fallen to 21%, with “personal satisfaction” of Blair rating at just 26%.
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Yes.
I'm amazed that conservatives don't take this issue and run with it - being AGAINST the gay agenda is an election WINNER. How many states in the US VOTED "NO" to gay marriage when brought to the ballot? The majority, right?
I'm guessing this issue's no different. Politicians are so out of touch with the common man these days.
She's not only one of the most hate-filled bigots out there, but one of the most ignorant. What a stupid thing to say.
So instead you will do everything possible to oblige the sodomites
Thats the Priests!
This is most frightening, since the politicians follow the people. (And the people are following the ideas of the intelligentsia, popularized by the mass media. So whoever controls the academy controls society).
Priestly sexual abuse of minors is a horrible thing. Even worse was the coverup of these crimes by some bishops.
But just keep in mind the fact that priests abuse minors less frequently than teachers or ministers.
In the authoritative work by Penn State professor Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests, it was determined that between .2 and 1.7 percent of priests are pedophiles. The figure among the Protestant clergy ranges between 2 and 3 percent....According to a survey by the Washington Post, over the last four decades, less than 1.5 percent of the estimated 60,000 or more men who have served in the Catholic clergy have been accused of child sexual abuse...
Dr. Thomas Plante, a psychologist at Santa Clara University, found that “80 to 90% of all priests who in fact abuse minors have sexually engaged with adolescent boys, not prepubescent children. Thus, the teenager is more at risk than the young altar boy or girls of any age.”...
In New York City alone, at least one child is sexually abused by a school employee every day...Shakeshaft has also determined that 15 percent of all students have experienced some kind of sexual misconduct by a teacher between kindergarten and 12th grade; the behaviors range from touching to forced penetration. She and Cohan also found that up to 5 percent of teachers sexually abuse children.
SEXUAL ABUSE IN SOCIAL CONTEXT: CATHOLIC CLERGY AND OTHER PROFESSIONALS
David Cameron believes in gay adoption like Tony Blair with no execptions for the Catholic Church. Blair has said all Labor MP's must support the Sexual Orientation Regulations while Cameron says Conservatives can have a free vote on it.
(Tories can vote as they please)
In Mass, and San Fran.
There's nothing alike assuming something to be true to help one prove it.
"All the news that we can make fit."
Exactly you cover up child abuse, move the Priests from parish to parish or out of the country and they tar the whole RCC with the same brush!
Did any other Church cover up child abuse and let the offenders reoffend?
At least the Bishop of Galway only messed around with women.
And we all need to do some thinking about the distinction between pre-pubescent child sexual abuse and "ephebephilia", not in terms of their depravity but in terms of their psychology.
You yourself could stand to do some research about WHEN the most awful and notorious of the RCC cases took place and what the prevailing psychiatric opinion on appropriate responses was at the time -- only if you're interested in the truth. If all one cares about is bashing the RCC church, then I guess the truth isn't really a concern.
Have a nice day.
LOL! More like they assume instead of prove -- saves all that time and trouble and messy details, like facts!
Sounds like the world would be better off without any religion in the world, if all the clergy can do is abuse children, shelter war criminals or tell the young to be sucide bombers they wont be greatly missed.
The fact is we would be better off with out any religion in the world. We could use all the holy buildings to house people instead of statues, use the money all the religious groups have tucked away in the bank, in shares to improve the quality of life for millions of people.
Mother,
Wasn't Sir Winston referring to the Navy in that quote? I know he was First Lord of the Admiralty in WW-I, but he was always an Army man through and through, n'est ce pas?
Expect sharia law in less than 10 years. That will solve everything.
"The real traditions of the British Navy are rum, buggery and the lash." (Winston Churchill)
If only the British still had someone with the intellect and brilliance of Gilbert Keith Chesterton alive today. He'd have a field day dueling these fools in the daily op-eds.
When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any.
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For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers.
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When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.
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